Religion and Violence in France

The relationship between religion and violence has long-dominated the historiography of the sixteenth-century religious wars in France. More recently, it has become a focus for scholars of the French Revolution which itself looked back to the religious wars as an instructive period in various ways. It is also a relationship which is tragically topical for France today. This workshop will bring together historians working in both fields for a comparative look at the role of religion and violence in these conflicts. There will be four introductory papers, but the main focus will be an open discussion of these themes. Confirmed presenters: Stuart Carroll, Joseph Clarke, Penny Roberts and Charles Walton (abstracts below).There is no fee for registration and lunch and other refreshments will be included. If you are interested in attending, please contact penny dot roberts at warwick dot ac dot uk for further details.

10.30 a.m. Coffee

11 a.m. Session 1

Stuart Carroll (York): Protestant Violence as Political Violence

This paper addresses what recent history might have to teach us about the relationship between the nature of the religious and the political. It questions whether the religious can be isolated as a category from the political before c.1700. It uses some examples of 'Protestant' violence to illustrate this point.

Penny Roberts (Warwick): Religion and Royal Violence during the Religious Wars

Natalie Davis' 'Rites of Violence' focused much of the historiography of the religious wars on the period up to and including the St Bartholomew's Day massacres and on popular violence. This paper will make a case for a shift in crown policy in the use of judicial violence against the Huguenots post 1572.

The historiography of Revolutionary violence has traditionally revolved around the urban ‘crowd’ and its relationship with the political elites. This paper looks instead to the Revolution’s men in uniform, the paramilitaries and regular soldiers who were responsible for the bulk of the blood shed during the Revolutionary period, to examine how a sense of religious difference shaped their recourse to extremes of violence throughout the 1790s.

Charles Walton (Warwick): Religion, Reciprocity and French Revolutionary Violence: Linking Political Economy to the Sacred

In light of Kojin Karatani’s recent book, The Structure of World History, I will discuss how the French Revolution gave expression to a religious like vision of political economy — fraternal reciprocity — and how this utopian vision was generative of political violence.

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